All of Australia's politicians — from Prime Minister John Howard to Greens senator Bob Brown — agree that the Solomon Islands is ripe for some tutelage. That state "failed" and "anarchy" reigns as "warlords terrorise"
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Bus drivers resist split shifts PERTH — Drivers employed by Southern Coast Transit (SCT) walked of the job for six days beginning July 9. The drivers, members of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), were resisting attempts by management to force
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Justice for Palestinians Kimberly James Roachelle in her letter on Israel (91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly #545), sounds like a defender of South Africa during its apartheid years. From my reading, there is no hatred of Israel in the pages of GLW. Kimberly James
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What do you call a trial in which, even if found not guilty, you can end up in solitary confinement for the rest of your life? According to Attorney-General Daryl Williams, one in which "all the fundamental guarantees of the US and
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Iraqis "are conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us", General John Abizaid, the newly appointed commander of the US occupation army in Iraq, admitted on July 16. Only a week earlier, US
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SYDNEY — Sections of the anti-war movement are attempting to disband the Sydney Walk Against the War Coalition, the organisation that organised the 500,000-strong march against the war on Iraq on February 16. They have already set
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SYDNEY — The large audience that attended the sold-out Valhalla Cinema talk given by George Monbiot on July 15, titled, "Future Implications For World Democracy", greeted Monbiot's ideas with a great deal of enthusiasm.
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[The following statement was issued in Sydney on July 18 by Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific (ASAP).] Plans to "interdict" North Korean shipping and the Pentagon's Operations Plan 5030 (brought to light in the July 21 US News and
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In the Mexican border city of Juarez, women keep dying. In the last 10 years, hundreds, maybe more than 1000, women have been murdered in Juarez and, despite increasing feminist organisation, authorities have yet to even slow the phenomenal death
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On December 5, 1996, an armed group of paramilitary thugs walked into a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Colombia. They shot union negotiator Isidro Gil seven times, killing him. Later that day, another unionist was kidnapped from his
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EDI workers strike for job protection BATHURST — Unions representing 90 striking workers at the EDI Rail factory, which manufactures train undercarriages, have been ordered by the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to a compulsory conference on
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For the past 18 months, through a brutal policy of deterrence by force, the federal government has been able to temporarily isolate Australia from the reality that vast numbers of people in the Middle East and South-East Asia are
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In GLW #545, Kieran Latty claimed "that the world economy grew continuously between 1950 and 1974, seemingly contradicting Karl Marx's prediction of continuing crisis". If by this, Latty meant that Marx predicted capitalism would
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Condemnation of Cuba was immediate, strong and practically global following the imprisonment of 75 political "dissidents" and the execution of three ferry hijackers. Prominent among the critics were past friends of Cuba of recognised
News
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CANBERRA — At 5am on July 17, about 100 Australian Federal Police officers attacked the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, acting under orders from the federal government's National Capital Authority (NCA). The AFP confiscated a previously
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SYDNEY — In a spirited demonstration near the home of immigration minister Philip Ruddock on July 19, 200 people attempted to exercise their right to protest, in the face of police attempts to deny it. Protesters wanted to
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SYDNEY — "War is the inevitable result of a system that places power and greed before solidarity and need", Lincoln Hancock, a Melbourne-based activist, told the July 11-13 Resistance national conference, held in Sydney. The
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GEELONG — On July 8, Tim Gooden was elected assistant secretary of the Geelong Trades and Labor Council for the next five years. Socialist Alliance member Gooden was nominated by the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union,
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DARWIN — Two of the Northern Territory's major rivers face serious threats from development proposals. Australians are already struggling to comprehend the billions of dollars that will be required just to keep the
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MELBOURNE — ACI workers and their supporters protested outside ACI headquarters on July 7 to demand that management end their lockout of workers at the ACI Mould Manufacturing plant in Box Hill. The workers, who were stood down
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BY STEPH MAWSON& KAROL FLOREK SYDNEY — On July 7, student activists picketed and disrupted a Sydney University Senate meeting. The meeting was to vote on a motion to support the federal government's tertiary education "reforms", and to
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BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE& ANTHEA STUTTER HOBART — The campaign to end the woodchipping of old-growth forests took a major step forward when thousands of people marched through the Styx Valley on July 13. At last year's state election, it was clear
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MELBOURNE — Workers from One Steel subsidiary Martin Bright Steels have been on strike for more than two weeks, as part of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union's Campaign 2003. The strike follows two weeks of overtime bans. The workers are
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DAMPIER, WA — A dispute that began with a company's arrogance towards a team of cleaners led to a week-long strike — and victory — for workers at Woodside's construction site on the Burrup Peninsula, near Dampier in Western
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MELBOURNE — On July 14, 40 people attended a public meeting to launch the Stop Killer Coke campaign, the aim of which is to pressure Coca-Cola to recognise union rights at its bottling plants in Colombia. Members of Sinaltrainal,
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MELBOURNE — In a victory for militant unionism, the Members Reform Team, consisting of rank-and-file postal workers, has won control of the Victorian postal and telecommunications (P&T) branch of the communications division of the
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HOBART — "One last chance" was the headline of the July 11 Hobart Mercury. The newspaper reported that 17-year-old Ruth Cruz had asked federal immigration minister Philip Ruddock to personally intervene before a July 29
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MELBOURNE — Victorian manufacturing workers are being hampered in their attempts to finalise enterprise bargaining negotiations. Across the industry, employers are consistently holding out on some demands. "There is a common
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Free Iraq! "Get us out of here now! There is nothing we can do to pacify the Iraqi people except get out of their country and allow them to restore order in whatever way THEY wish." — Excerpt from a letter from a US soldier in Iraq to his mother,
World
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JOHANNESBURG — The petro-military-commerce safari to Africa that US President George Bush embarked upon July 7-12 may well succeed in the areas that progressive critics fear most. However, those critics, who protested in several
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Hong Kong secretary for security Regina Ip, notorious for her arrogant and bureaucratic handling of the territory's controversial proposed anti-subversion law (article 23 of Hong Kong's Basic Law, the territory's "constitution"),
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Major Douglas Rokke joined the US Army in 1967 and served in Vietnam. In 1986. he became a nuclear, biological and chemical warfare instructor. After 1990, Rokke worked extensively with depleted-uranium (uranium-238) weapons, becoming one of the Pentagon's foremost experts in the field.
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Around 2000 people protested against the visit of US President George Bush in Pretoria on July 9. In Cape Town, more than 1500 people marched. Anti-War Coalition spokesperson Shaheed Mahomed said the protests were aimed at the US government's brutal
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The rhetoric was about AIDS and poverty, but the agenda is oil and empire. US President George Bush's July tour of Africa highlighted the ways in which the US is consolidating its economic and strategic role across the continent —
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Of the myriad of global trade rules being negotiated under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is among the least understood. However, it is also among the most
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ALEIDA GUEVARA is a Cuban pediatrician and the eldest daughter of Argentinian revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Aleida March. She works at the William Soler Children's Hospital in Havana, but has also used her skills to aid the people of
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On July 14, three Cuban adults were killed and a child was hospitalised after being shot in the head when three men lengthy criminal records attempted to hijack a fishing boat in the Cuban port of La Coloma. The hijackers, armed
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The Nigeria Labour Congress, the country's peak council of blue-collar trade unions, early on July 8 "suspended" a general strike as it entered its ninth day. The strike had been called in response to massive petrol and kerosene price
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TORONTO — Ruthless cuts to public health spending didn't cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), but inadequate funding of health services by Canada's federal and Ontario provincial governments certainly contributed to
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MANILA — On July 10, the progressive democratic alliance Sanlakas and the Workers Party (Partido ng Manggagawa) were at long last proclaimed as having won seats in Congress along with five other organisations. The
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MONTREAL — On July 5, under a withering sun, a tent city was erected in Montreal's Parc Lafontaine by hundreds of poor residents, anti-poverty activists and homeless people. Tents and tarps were put up to protect people from the
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JOHANNESBURG — When the African National Congress government of South Africa introduced its neoliberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) macro-economic framework in 1996, it promised South Africans that it would result
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LOS ANGELES — US President George Bush flew into California on June 27 to raise millions of dollars from wealthy Republicans. He got the money, but he also got booed by thousands of protesters in Los Angeles and in Burlingame,
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On July 9, workers took over a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Villa de Cura, south-west of Caracas. The workers charged that the company, part of Venezuela's Grupo Polar, plans to close the plant and lay-off hundreds of employees in an effort to
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DILI — More than a year after East Timor's labour code came into effect on May 1, 2002, three of the boards required to implement it — the Minimum Wages Board, the Labour Relations Board (an arbitration body) and the National
Culture
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Actively Radical TV — Sydney community television's progressive current affairs producers tackle the hard issues from the activist's point of view. Includes the 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ news. CTS Sydney (UHF 31), every Sunday, 9pm. Phone (02) 9564 1277. Visit
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Ralph Miliband and the Politics of the New LeftBy Michael NewmanMerlin Press, 2002368 pages, $52.70 (pb) REVIEW BY PHIL SHANNON Many socialists in Britain have Ralph Miliband to thank for saving them from the sad fate of becoming a political
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"This man is, to me, a prophet!", declared Taos Pueblo recording artist Robert Mirabal on June 29 in welcoming legendary performer Harry Belafonte to the stage of the 2003 annual Taos Solar Music Festival.
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I've seen two films during which I desperately wanted to walk out of the cinema to escape the assault to my senses: Peter Greenaway's The Baby of Macon (1993) and Larry Clark's Kids (1995). Greenaway's excesses included murder,